Stuff-n-Such By Lisa

A little bit of this and a little bit of that, from a stay-at-home Grandma of Five!
I love to do all kinds of crafts, especially sewing & scrapbooking so I will probably be posting pics of those kinds of things and tid-bits about the Grandma Life!

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Well, It's been a long while since I have posted...about 9 months in fact! That's just crazy, but I've had a lot going on with my health and just getting priorities straight in my life!

It's good to be back though, and I hope I will be better about posting on a regular basis now.

I've gotten so behind that a lot of the projects I will be posting will be several months to a year old, but I'm hoping they will still be of interest to my readers/followers.

I love to sew and as my regular readers know I've been sewing a lot of doll dresses lately specifically American girl doll dresses! Here is one I made for my precious Grandgirl "B", a Cinderella Dress from Simplicity 5705 view C.

I have three granddaughters and two nieces who love dolls so I stay pretty busy cranking out those outfits! I suppose I would consider my sewing skills to be somewhere between beginner and intermediate. Even though I've been sewing since I was a child I've had large gaps of years where I didn't sew at all. And for that reason I sometimes struggle with the more difficult patterns and working with fussy types of fabrics. I can't tell you how many times I cussed while trying to sew these princess outfits with these sheer fabrics such as tulle, satin and crêpe! I look back on it now though and am grateful for the experience! If I can get good at sewing these little tiny doll clothes with such difficult fabrics hopefully I will be able to do an even better job on regular size clothing!When I first bought this awesome pattern, the Grandgirls and nieces were immediately smitten with all the pretty styles and each one picked out their favorite for me to make for them!

I started with the Mermaid dress, which I made and blogged about here. Then I made the Belle dress for my Grandgirl "J" and thought I was going to end my stint making tiny princess doll dresses!Fortunately, after a bit of time passed...I was ready to give it another try and make the Cinderella dress for Grandgirl "B"!

She had been so patient waiting for it...and I didn't want to let her down.I was surprised to find that this one went much smoother than the first two!

It makes sense I suppose...after struggling with the first two and a lot of trial and error on those dresses, I was finally starting to understand all of the pattern instructions and how to work with the difficult fabrics.

I had a little bit of trouble making the "pouf" sections around the waist of the dress, but a call to Simplicity and a google search or two helped me figure it out!

I usually post a photo showing what tools and supplies I used for a project,

but somehow when I completed this project, I forgot to take a photo of the supplies and tools, so since it has been awhile...I won't try to gather all of those things up for a photo, but I will put this list here for reference:

Tools/Supplies Used for this Project:

(Note: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an
affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn
fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.”)

This edition is highlighting Halloween and is co-hosted by: Jen Goode from the blog "100 Directions".

I have been collecting bottle caps for awhile, just imagining all the crafty possibilities they hold...so I decided it was time to try and use some of them up before Hubby asks that inevitable question..."What are you going to do with those?"

At first I wanted to make a Halloween-themed wind chime, but soon discovered that in order to make these babies "chime" I would need a ton of them and couldn't possibly get it done in 15 minutes or less, so I moved on to a simpler solution: a Door Hanger!

The most obvious thing I could think of that resembled the shape of the bottle caps was of course a pumpkin or a spider and I settled on spiders and a spider web!

This project was so easy to make and really the only time consuming part was taking the rubber seals out of the bottle caps. For this reason, I recommend you purchase the regular metal bottle caps that are made specifically for crafts, that don't include that seal.

If you aren't in a hurry though and you don't mind the tedious task of removing them, then by all means go ahead and recycle/upcycle!

Here is a short slideshow/video I made of how I assembled this project:

Be sure to check-out all of the other Halloween Goodies in this series by clicking on the info-graphic below!
Thank-you for visiting my blog today, hope you found some fun and inspiration and will visit again soon!

(*Stuff-n-Such, Lisa Hall, is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, and affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com)

Thursday, July 21, 2016

It's Craft Lightning time again and this one is all about Scout Crafts!

I remember as a young girl attending Brownies and Girl Scouts was always a fun adventure and my favorite part was all the crafts we did!

These organizations always taught such good values and important skills as well.

Sewing was one of the skills I learned back then and this project is a very basic way to teach beginning sewing skills!

I first did this project with my Grandaughters a few years back, to help teach them to sew and now I am proud to say my 8 year old Granddaughter has graduated to using a sewing machine!

As you know, I love to upcycle/recycle things in my crafts and these sewing cards were no exception.

I used old cereal boxes for the cardboard and printed out cute and colorful pictures/graphics from the internet to paste on the cardboard.

I found that the pictures looked better if I used a drier type glue to adhere them to the cardboard, such as "Zip Dry" glue which is used a lot in Scrapbooking projects to preserve the integrity of the photos and not make them appear "lumpy".

I made two versions of the cards, one with small holes for older kids and one with larger (and less) holes for the little ones.

I used some washi tape to cover the edges and poked the holes using a metal scribe on the small holes and the Crop-a-Dile II from We R Memory Keepers for the card with larger holes.

My Granddaughter who was 6 at the time was able to help with almost all of the steps in this project, so I would say it is perfect for any Scout troop with children ages 6 and above!

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Time for another round of Craft Lightning and this one is a first...a Father's Day theme!

I really had to wrack my brain for this one...I am NEVER good at gifts for men or even boys for that matter!

I guess I just typically like the "girly" stuff...but fortunately while cleaning out some storage areas on our property, I came across this old crusty tool box (carrier) that hubby was going to throw out because apparently it had outlived it's usefulness...to him anyway!

I knew that I had this Craft Lightning post coming up and I thought surely I could think of something to make from this for Father's Day...and It finally came to me...a "catchall" box for that special "Dad" in you or your children's lives.

I don't know about the guys in your life, but I know my son's and my hubby in particular are not super concerned about where stuff goes when they are tired after a long day at work!

This catch-all will help keep them organized and not lose those important items they need for the next day or in the near future.

Perfect place for a wallet, work ID badge, watch, spare change, neck ties, fitbit, and a wedding ring or other jewelry for those guys who can't wear them at their jobs!

Really the hardest part of this project was getting the old, rusty, grubby tool carrier clean!
I'll have to admit that it took a lot longer than 15 minutes to do that part alone, but of course you don't have to start with something in such bad shape...you can always use a nice wooden box purchased from your local craft store and skip the cleaning step!

I just like to re-purpose old stuff that is headed for the landfill...if I can think of a way to make it useful.

I tried to only use tools and supplies that I had on hand for this project and this time that almost caused a big craft "fail", because the spray paint I used was some paint that had been in hubby's garage stash for quite awhile and I didn't realize that older spray paints can lose their air pressure after awhile and cause spotting.

If you look closely, you can see this is what happened to my project and I started to panic, because I didn't have a lot of time to start over...but after spraying the rest of the project I started actually liking the mottled/splotched look of the paint...it made it kind of gritty looking...more like it was suited for a man, so I left it be and hoped for the best.

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog and I hope you liked my Father's Day upcycled project!

Be sure to click on the graphic below and see all of the other great projects brought to you by other creative bloggers.

Many thanks to the hosts of Craft Lightning also: Angie from the Country Chic Cottage, Carolina from 30 minute Crafts and Danielle from Busy Mom's Helper.

See ya next time!

(*Stuff-n-Such, Lisa Hall, is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, and affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com)